Five things to recap the last twelve (plus) months of our lives...

1. Marilyn and Joel came home!

After nearly three years in Ghana, Africa Matt's parents, Joel and Marilyn, returned. Since our lives were so connected to theirs while living in their home, this was a big change in our lives. It was the catalyst to thing #2:

2. We moved!

I yearned for a house of our own for so long and in a very quick twist of events, we ended up back in our old ward, within a quarter mile of our first home, in Farmington. I was happy as Farmington is home for me. Our little yellow house:


Enjoying our front porch:


3. I quit!

I gave away the ending before I even let you know the beginning, but in our pursuit to get a home loan, I started working full-time for Farmington City as the Arts and Special Events Coordinator - essentially an expansion of what I had been doing from home part time. However, after working 13 of 20 Saturdays, nights, and some 50 hour weeks, and with Matt seemingly situated at Jacobsen Construction, we decided that the girls needed their mom and Matt needed his wife. So, I quit the job I loved to be mom. Now I am back to being a volunteer. They complain that they can't get rid of me, but I love it too much. I have now taken on the Miss Farmington program as the Executive Director.

Oh yeah, and every Friday I bake with my good friend Sarah:



4. Emma is a Kindergartner!

The easiest way to measure the passing of time is in watching our children grow. Emma started Kindergarten this fall. I spent the last nine months with anxiety over it and now my days are planned around her drop off and pick up from school - so its safe to say this is a big part of our lives. Lucy gets bigger every day too. I often forget that she is only two. She keeps asking me to go to preschool, but not until next year...

5. A few family vacations...

Since our last post we had a beautiful vacation to Oahu and we went to Park City and Bear Lake.
For some reason I can't find any of the pictures though...

Honorable Mention.....Emma's Billboard

Matt's former employer Jacobsen Construction was asked by Worker's Compensation for some families to have their picture taken for an ad campaign and Matt and Emma were chosen. A few weeks after the photo shoot I was driving down I-15 at the point of the mountain and happened to see this:

She's moved around a lot since the first sighting, but if your lucky, you might spot her on your commute! She has also been in Utah Business Magazine and in a Worker's Compensation mailer. No, we didn't get a dime for it, just the fun of having our adorable child's mug randomly showing up in crazy places!

As requested...

I have been asked repeatedly to youtube a video of Lucy performing "A Dream is a Wish" from Cinderella. Well, this isn't youtube, but if you like it maybe we'll get that big time...later...

Sarah

Um...hey!

I know what you are going to say - or what you are thinking - so just lay off for a sec. It has been almost a year and a lot has happened. I don't think I could easily recap if I wanted to. Let's just say I was working full time and work had taken over my life. Now, I am back home again after a grueling 7 months and am once again a stay at home mom. Oh, that's another big thing - we actually have a home, Matt has a new job, everything is different and yet, oddly, the same. Yea!

My last post was about a glorious cruise with our friends Sean and Sarah. Our final days of that cruise were spent in New York City. Here are some fun pics from that adventure:Matt's first time in the city. I tried to get his "first impression expression."

Sarah and I got cupcakes from Magnolia Bakery - the bakery that started the cupcake craze. So good.

Matt and I in Times Square. It was a quick trip through town. We were there less than 48 hours, but we crammed in everything you can in that amount of time - Central Park, Shopping, Pizza galore, Times Square, Empire State Building, Harold Square, Rockefeller Center, Grand Central Station, Julliard, Street Fairs on the East End, Touring through the Upper West Side...needless to say, our feet were killing us! Funny story of the trip - Sarah and I had to leave our husbands in New York because our genius idea of taking the Subway to the airport backfired when we were enlightened that even Subway trains are effected by rush hour traffic. We arrived at the airport to find that we were too late to check-in to our flight - our only chance was to say farewell to the husbands and book it....Sarah and I cut in line at security and I didn't even put my shoes on to run to the terminal. We ran our guts out (of course our terminal was at the complete opposite end of the airport) and made it as they were closing the door. I sat in my seat on the plane and cried out of anxiety and stress and Sarah and I went home and saw our children and slept in our beds while our hubby's spent the night on the floor of JFK. Ha ha....

Okay....more catching up in the next post...

Bermuda - Day 7

We were very excited about our plan for Bermuda. We had decided to rent scooters and tour the island. We hadn't reserved them ahead of time, so in order to make sure we got some we booked it off the boat at the earliest possible moment and were the first people in the scooter office. The boys (who were the designated drivers) were safety briefed and then we were on our way.

Sean and Sarah knew of a rail trail that we could take to see some of the sights. It was a cool trail with little traffic and beautiful scenery. It was on this trail that we came across Fort Scaur. After walking the wrong trail through some fine Bermudian's backyard, we got oriented and found the cool old fort with interesting catacombs. Here is Matt looking at the cool cannon:

And Sean, Sarah, and Matt in the never ending catacomg tunnel:

Then we braved the streets of Bermuda on our scooters to tour downtown Hamilton and the beaches along South Road. On the way we stopped at Dobb's Hill Lighthouse:

Our last leg of the journey we toured all of the beaches on the way to the famous Horseshoe Bay beach. There wasn't much swimming involved due to the infestation of Japanese Man of War Jellyfish - whose sting is supposed to be highly painful. Nevertheless, all of the beaches were incredible. Some fun pictures from Horseshoe Bay:

Sean offered Sarah his shirt and she forgot to take off her helmet to put the shirt on. I still laugh every time I see this picture.

We kept chastising Sean for getting too much sun. This is him showing us how much he cared what we said!

Bermuda is beautiful and we have decided that it is a future destination for a fun family vacation because our only complaint was that we didn't have enough time to see everything!

Fun on the Ship

Me attempting to win the ship's Karaoke contest: "Princess Popstar"

Matt and me waiting in the Princess Theater for one of the shows to start

Matt and Sean in their twinner outfits waiting at the designated meeting spot

One of the fabulous desserts we ate - the sampling of all things dessert-like was my favorite aspect of the cruise

My favorite picture of Sean and Sarah - those crazy kids.

Formal night.

Crazy Antigua Pictures

Sean pretending to make a phone call

Me being an anchor

Matt working it

Me "sexy posing" on demand

Antigua

Day 3 On Antigua we didn't exactly have a game plan - so as we walked off of the ship and were inundated with taxi drivers looking for customers we found Choci who offered to take us on a tour of the island and drop us off and pick us up from the "best beach" on the island all for the same price as our one taxi ride on St. Thomas - we decided it sounded like a pretty good deal.

Our first stop with a National Park with a fort on the top of a mountain with an incredible view.

Then we went to the Naval Dockyard, which was also very scenic. We toured the museum and learned some of the history of the island and then spent some time taking crazy photos of each other. After one silly pose we adopted a "friend" who must have been entertained by our antics enough to follow us around. He offered to take our picture:

We also shared a cab with some crazy characters that had some interested comments as we continued on our tour through the rainforest and past the many beaches. One couple was from New Jersey and to them seeing a cow in a pasture was like seeing a lion on safari. It entertained me. It was really cool to see the pineapples and bananas growing like crazy among the foilage of the rainforest.

We spent some time on the beach, trying to stay out of the sun and then went into town for a little shopping. I think we bought one thing between the four of us and then went back to the boat.

Antigua was beautiful and ranks second in my favorite ports.

Sarah